Conventional pick and place devices for mounting components on a printed circuit board utilize a simple vacuum probe to pick-up the component and place it at a selected position on the substrate. Such a typical device can be seen, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,611,397, commonly-assigned herewith.
Such conventional pick and place heads rely on machine set-up to ensure alignment of the component lead plane and the placement surface. However, even if the machine can be properly calibrated or set-up, the components and the placement surfaces vary from one to another, making it virtually impossible to provide proper alignment.